Museums Based on Books: Your Nominees

From Homer to Hobbits, your awesome suggestions for museums based on fictional worlds

Alice in Wonderland Museum? Darth Vader Gallery? (Alice by John Tenniel on Wikimedia Commons; Darth Vader by gtartwork, CC BY 3.0 on DeviantArt)

Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk spoke at the Getty Center as part of our Art of Writing series this month. While the auditorium was full and the audience rapt, there was an exciting parallel conversation over on Twitter.

We recently published a post about Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, an unusual institution dedicated to the artifacts of a character from his 2008 book, also called The Museum of Innocence, named Kemal Basmaci. Pamuk’s museum for the fictional Kemal contains everyday items like cigarette butts, family photos, coins, and knick-knacks that the author spent years gathering as he envisioned and created his character.

So on Twitter, we asked you this question: If you were to create a museum inspired by a novel or a fictional character, what would it be?

And so many of you responded. For hours! Here’s a sample of the books or characters nominated on Twitter for their own museum, and our (silly) guesses at what artifacts might be on display:

A Darth Vader museum—The sound of breathing would greet you in the lobby

A Clockwork Orange—A soundtrack of Beethoven’s 9th playing throughout the galleries

About The Author

I’m an editor in the Public Affairs department of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Previously I was a research and curatorial assistant in the Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art at the Getty Research Institute.

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